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The Texas Gulf Coast, like most parts of the American Wastes, was a remarkably hazardous place.
It was named the Corpse Coast, due to constant intertribal warfare that left a permanent red smear across the landscape.
As civilization slowly took root in other nearby lands; displaced criminals, mercenaries, pirates, raiders, and slavers poured off of Rafter boats or from wandering caravans to settle and plunder the ruins of the Coast. These men and women came seeking the freedom to live however they pleased, and they're followed by brave, if not unscrupulous, merchants and bounty hunters seeking to drag select immigrants back to distant lands where they're wanted for crimes against local regimes.
Here, civilization took a steep plunge into the dark ages and over the course of the century made a drunken, slow attempt to reach its former glory. Those that remained alive long enough to gather followers, grew in strength and numbers until they were able to carve a piece of the Coast for themselves. Only the strong and ruthless prevailed in the seemingly unending war of attrition, with more powerful factions totally devouring weaker ones over the years. By the year 2101, these raider factions grew from simple, nameless opportunistic warbands to widely recognized, and often feared, coastal clans.
There were three major factions that still wrestled for total control of the Corpse Coast.
The Scarbrand Badlanders, descendants of American ex-special forces and Canadian survivalists, inhabited the windswept hills of the northwest. The Badlanders were, by far, the most numerous and surprisingly well-disciplined faction in the Coast due to their ancestral military-style background and upbringing. They were also the most ambitious, constantly invading rival factions or minor warband territories to add some form of regional strength to their banner.
The second major faction was the Cult of the Reshapened. Hailing from a nearby vault, the cultist faction was comprised of cybernetically augmented humans whose main ideology was the pursuit of bionic perfection and, as the name implied, a subsequent reshaping of the post-apocalyptic landscape into their vision of paradise. Speculations and rumors concerning their origins pointed towards a vault experiment gone horribly wrong, which resulted in the creation of the Cult sometime during the first decade of the nuclear holocaust.
Though not as numerous as the Badlanders, the Cult's quasi-religious influence on the locals was quite strong, and their congregation of followers grows daily at an astonishingly faster rate. Their strength did not come from numbers, however, but from their vastly superior technologies.
The third major faction, The Lexxers, was less inclined in terms of actively pursuing conflict. Operating out of the Pre-War relic that they called home, the USS Lexington CV-16 aircraft carrier, the Lexxers functioned as a relatively neutral faction as they pursued profit and monetary gain rather than devote their cause to warfare.
Whatever anyone in the Corpse Coast wanted; from weapons, chems, supplies, slaves, all could be found in the antiquated halls of the ship.
The balance of power rarely tipped to anyone's favor as of late, inducing a form of cold war that was just a few engagements shy of open war. But recently, news of an expeditionary team bearing an unknown flag entering the bloody borders of the Coast reached the ears of each faction leader.
To say that first contact went in a rather unpleasant way would be the understatement of the century. The expedition in question, however, was not from the Dominion.
They were the Brotherhood of Steel.
"Contact left! Incoming!"
A rocket whistled as it sped across the battlefield, heading for the entrenched Brotherhood knights and scribes. The scribes took cover, and the knights braced for the impending blast where they stood. A ball of fire erupted where it struck, sending debris and dust flying up in clouds.
As bullets ricocheted and bounced off of his armor, Paladin Brand peered through the smoke and flames. He saw the Badlanders making for the left flank of their position. Dozens of them, all suited up in Pre-War combat armor and carrying an assortment of weapons, from machine-guns to the Old World energy-weapons, and the few rocket-launchers pilfered from old military base ruins. "They're trying to flank us!"
Earlier that day, their team took a wrong turn as they wandered the ruins in search of a promising location in which they could set up a base of operations, and walked right into the raiders' ambush. The roads had been covered in nail-mines and other crude explosive traps, furthering funneling them into a single route of escape as the Badlanders had set up positions in key high vantage points all across the ruins.
While the Brotherhood may have considerably more advanced weapons and armor when compared to the savage raiders clans of the Coast, the Badlanders had plenty of time to hone their engagement tactics into a coherent and highly adaptable battle strategy. Seeing how the Brotherhood took advantage of the terrain, and how they seemed to outgun them in most aspects, the Badlanders chose to surround the entrenched armored figures to put an end to the struggle.
The rewards that awaited them, should they succeed, were priceless.
"Remember!" Brand declared, "If we die here, we take the technologies with us! For the Brotherhood!"
"Ad Victoriam!" The scribes and knights yelled in unison, sounding more of a desperate appeal for good fortune rather than a battlecry.
The aforementioned technologies, their weapons and armor, were sacred relics to the Brotherhood. Certain countermeasures were built into their equipment by the scribes, as they would rather scuttle their gear upon death rather than allow the savages to besmirch their memory by looting their remains and using their technologies to wreak more suffering upon the Wasteland.
The Brotherhood fought well, killing scores of Badlanders as they closed in like a tightening noose, but took casualties through the grueling minutes of the battle. For every ten that the raiders lost, the Brotherhood band would lose one of their own. Little by little, until only Brand and a handful of knights, plus a single scribe, was left.
Thirteen brothers and sisters, dead before they even got to their objective. That left only seven of them, including Brand.
"They'll be back." Brand said upon seeing the small respite they were granted after the battle. "Quickly, set the countermeasures."
"What about their bodies, Paladin?" Scribe Karter inquired, "We can't leave them like this, they deserve better."
"We have no time to bury them." Brand told her, "Take their holotags if you can, but we have to make sure the technologies don't fall into the wrong hands. Now move!"
The survivors of the attack did as instructed, taking holotags away from the corpses and activating the timer on the charges built into their weapons and armor. Some of the knights salvaged what they could from the supplies left in their comrades' remains, then picked up the pace as they followed the Paladin out of the ruins.
Brand was pissed off. The expedition was nothing short of a disaster.
The mission had failed, his next concern lay in getting himself and the survivors out of the hellhole they were dragged into. Perhaps, in the future, the Elder of their Chapter might send him out with an even bigger group to avenge this loss. The Paladin, as was his habit when he was pissed, took a minute to set aside his anger and focus on the new objective.
"Paladin, they're coming for us!" One of the knights yelled.
"Initiate a tactical withdraw!" Brand commanded, standing his ground and covering the survivors while they ran past him. He saw the first of the Badlanders round the corner. His plasma-rifle growled as he squeezed the trigger, releasing it to send a high-speed superheated bolt that tore the raider in half from the middle.
He kept firing, drawing the raiders to himself and cutting them down with bolt after bolt, until the MF cell clicked empty. Suddenly, a tremendous shockwave rocked the area as the countermeasures on the Brotherhood dead detonated.
One of the knights screamed for their leader to snap out of his murdering frenzy, "Paladin! What the hell are you doing?! Come on!"
Brand turned heel and ran for cover, just as a rocket whizzed by and struck the ruined building next to him. The resulting explosion flipped over a car wreck that knocked the Paladin off-balance. He recovered quickly, using his armor's strength to propel himself up to his feet.
The Brotherhood emerged out of the ruins and into no man's land. They fired back at their pursuers, sprinted a few feet, then fired again. They kept doing this until their weapons overheated. Quickly scanning their surroundings, the Paladin caught sight of the silhouette of an old civilian radio station in the distance, no more than a hundred meters away.
"There! Head for the radio station!" Brand yelled. "We can fortify a position from there!"
When the Brotherhood arrived at said destination, they immediately burst through the old gate and entered the compound. They realized soon after that the radio station was far from empty.
Several eight-wheeled armored transports were parked in the compound, one barring the doors leading into the station building. A small army of twenty or thirty men, all wearing black combat armor the likes of which Brand had never seen before in his life, sprang to their feet upon seeing the Paladin and his men entering the compound.
They weren't shooting at Brand or the others yet, but the Paladin remained wary.
The Badlanders, following the survivors into the radio station, did not fare as well as the Brotherhood. The powerful guns of the armored transports utterly decimated the warband, leaving not a single man or woman standing.
Then, their saviors turned their attention to Brand and his men. Already, the smoking guns swiveled down to aim at the Paladin and his armored knights. Scribe Karter was visibly terrified and moved to let the bigger and better equipped knights act as her shield. Neither side pulled the trigger on one another for the longest time, neither breathed or said a word.
A few minutes later, a female officer emerged from the old building, hearing the commotion outside and wishing to investigate. Accompanying her was a man and a woman, possibly mercenaries, both clad in desert-wear gear.
The officer stood out among her fellow soldiers by wearing an overcoat over her armor, and a desert scarf to match. She eyed the Paladin suspiciously and adjusted the metal facemask that obscured the lower part of her face. "Now who the hell are you guys supposed to be?"
At least she spoke English.
Paladin Brand was hesitant about making introductions to strangers, who might be just as bad as the raider factions that infested the Coast. And yet, he knew that if he showed any form of hostility or reluctance for cooperation, he might endanger what was left of his team. And so he obliged the woman, "I'm Paladin Danik Brand, leader of this expeditionary team. We are the Brotherhood of Steel."
Faint condescending snickers were heard among the soldiers, and the officer muttered under her breath. "Wasters. Just another bunch of wasters." She looked up at the Paladin and made it clear that they weren't welcome in the compound, "Alright, Paladin. If you lead these men, I want you to tell them to get out of their suits and disarm. That includes you and the lady hiding back over there."
Brand blinked twice, still processing what he just heard.
"Now, please." The woman's tone turned menacing.
"We're not surrendering our equipment to you, tribal!" Ross, one of Brand's junior knights declared.
The officer noticed the youthful crack in his voice and was not impressed, "Kid, these Centaurs are packing twin 20mm cannons powerful enough to punch through power-armor plating. That was tested against models a hell of a lot more advanced than that piece of junk you're wearing."
She was looking at Brand now, "You really wanna know what those guns can do to a man?"
They were surrounded, outnumbered, outgunned and exhausted from the raider ambush. Safe from the Badlanders, only to fall to the mercies of this new faction.
"Fine." Brand swallowed his pride and heaved a tired sigh. "Knights, Scribe Karter? Do as she says."
With an irate huff, Ross disembarked from his rig as did the others. Then, they slowly placed their overheated guns on the ground.
"Okay, what now?" The words were barely out of his mouth when the soldiers closest to them rushed forward and tackled the disarmed Brotherhood team to the ground. A brief struggle ensued, but they were soon overpowered and locked in handcuffs.
"What is this?" The Paladin demanded, "We've done as you asked!"
"Sorry, can't take any chances." The officer shrugged, signaling her men to drag them into the building for lockup.
Brand struggled to get to his feet, even when cuffed, and glanced up as he was led away. The old flag of the Commonwealth had been taken down from the flagpole to be replaced by a different standard, something that was just as unknown as the soldiers that represented it.
A ashen-silver eagle on an obsidian black cloth, surrounded by a white laurel.
"Relax, big guy. You haven't made an enemy of the Dominion yet, so we're not going to kill you."
"You call this a piece of junk?" Sgt. Sterling laughed as he inspected one of the power-armors confiscated from the Brotherhood.
Hope nodded, "You don't?"
"I'm no engineer, but I'm pretty sure this thing's been given a lot more care than most of the equipment the Dominion gives its troops these days."
The lieutenant, offended by the comparison, retorted. "If you were one, you'd retract that statement in a heartbeat."
"Huh, that's strange." Sterling stopped as he brushed a hand across several explosive charges built into the suit's fusion core capacitor. "What the hell are these supposed to be?"
"I wouldn't mess around with those things, sergeant. Let the eggheads do that part of the job for us."
The Dominion expedition had reached the end of the road south, landing at the drastically changed Texas Gulf Coast. After spending just two days tangling with the local regimes and their lackeys and taking casualties, Hope decided to stop venturing further and find a suitable location to set up their main base of operations. Thankfully, none of her men were killed in the attempt to clear out the radio station. Her foremost priority was to bolster the defenses of the old radio tower, then salvage the ancient equipment therein for their own uses. Thanks to the materials stored in their convoy of Centaurs, they had the resources to accomplish both objectives.
"So what do you plan to do with the wasters, LT?"
Hope rubbed her hands together and pressed against her fists until her knuckles popped. "I can think of two things. We can keep them alive long enough to extract some decent intel from them, or just go the easy way."
"Are they really that much of a threat?"
"You should assume the worst out of everyone, sergeant. You'll live longer."
"Maybe, but respectfully, ma'am? That sure won't earn you that many friends out here."
"Friends? In this hellhole?" Hope answered with all incredulity as she walked back into the radio station.
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